Play for Peace 2

Youth meeting “Play for Peace 2” was organized from 30.08.2015 till 06.09.2015. in Nis, Serbia gathering young people from 9 countries – Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, Portugal, Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo under UNSCR 1244/99, Croatia and Slovenia with Club for Youth Empowerment 018 as a host organization. The meeting offered participants opportunity to experience the value of the intercultural training and will build their capacities and competence on peer educator’s skills, tolerance and inclusion of the youth from socially excluded groups through different tools of non-formal education such as sports and games, intercultural workshops as well as the workshops on facilitation of workshops, group dynamics and learning process, and influence them to become more active citizens in their communities fighting discrimination and raising awareness of difficult situation of young people coming from vulnerable groups.

One segment of the meeting was dedicated to fair play and non-violent support for the favorite teams and difference between hooligans vs. fan support.As the extreme support groups are active both offline and online, participants had learn how to combat hate speech.

Basic skills for peer education method of work allowed participants to transfer the knowledge and information to their peers in their respective countries.

Objectives of the project were: -To offer the young participants opportunity to experience the value of the intercultural meeting through sport and games, intercultural and anti-discrimination workshops. -To educate young participants how to promote universal rules of sports in the local community and combat intolerance, discrimination and hate speech on the local and international level -To recognize games and sport as the instruments for people’s mutual understanding, mediation between the cultures and dissemination of the universal values such as fair play, tolerance, inclusion, respect and similar

The meeting consisted of: – Thematic workshop: Extreme support groups online (focusing on conflicts among the regional support groups) – Introduction to No Hate Speech Movement; – Sport values/Support to the favorite team – Hooligans vs Fans; Creation of team support songs and flags; Creating the labels – the participants learned the basic terminology like stereotypes, prejudices, discrimination; Marginalized groups – the position of marginalized and socially excluded groups and groups living in poverty and the problems they face with in everyday life; the empowerment of the participants and organizations to organize sport workshops with young people in their countries in order to foster universal sport rules like fair play, respect, understanding and similar. The participants were provided with the information about European initiatives (such as FARE Action Weeks) that could help them develop more sport activities on the local level; Gender inequality in sports – another important issue that the meeting tackled was gender inequalities and position of women in sports.

The field visit to Women Football Club “Masinac” in Nis was organized to discuss with the management of the club and the players about these issues – Creative workshop: Exploring cultural diversities – Sport workshop: Traditional games/ Football game / Games without borders/Martial arts or swimming pool games.Part of the meeting was organized through sport workshops and will give participants new tools for the organization of the peer education workshops –to use sport as the common ground. The participants learned the basics of fair play, fair competition, mutual respect, team work.